Engineering Manager - Pay

Phorest Software; Leatherhead; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private healthcare

Employee assistance program

Pension and life assurance

Bike to work scheme

Financial Wellbeing benefits

Job summary

Phorest Software in Leatherhead is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the Pay Pillar teams. You will focus on growing and mentoring engineers to enhance productivity while collaborating with product managers and designers to deliver effective payment solutions.

Your role will also involve ensuring operational excellence, championing observability strategies, and driving technical projects to timely completion. Experience in fintech and agile methodologies is critical.

Phorest offers a supportive environment, including private healthcare and flexible working options.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in a leadership role with direct reports.
• 5 years of experience in object-oriented software design (Java, Kotlin, Ruby).
• Experience in designing scalable solutions in fintech.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop an engineering team.
• Provide guidance on best practices and technical challenges.
• Drive execution of technical projects with timely deliveries.

Skills

Leadership in engineering

Object-oriented software design

Agile methodologies

Collaboration with cross-functional teams

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or similar

Tools

Monitoring and observability tools

Job description

About Phorest

Would you like to create the future of a product used by thousands of businesses and millions of consumers? Phorest Salon Software powers over 11,000 hair and beauty salons in Ireland, UK, Germany, Australia, Finland, USA, Canada, UAE and Netherlands and the platform processes 7 million appointments a month for hair and beauty consumers. Phorest is the number 1 salon software brand for premium independent salons in those markets and our next goal is to become a platform upon which other companies can build applications for premium salons.

The Opportunity

Phorest is expanding its Payments solutions, delivering both online and in-store payment experiences to thousands of businesses daily. As an Engineering Manager, you will lead one of the teams within the Pay Pillar, which currently consists of three teams. Your expertise in delivering high-quality, reliable fintech products will play a key role in scaling and improving our payments infrastructure.

Your primary responsibility will be to grow, coach, and motivate a team of engineers, helping them achieve their individual goals while driving Phorest’s broader objectives. While you’ll have opportunities to be hands‑on, your main focus will be on setting your team up for success, removing blockers, and enabling smooth execution. You’ll work closely with the Head of Engineering and Product team to define the team’s strategy while also collaborating with other teams where domains overlap.

Additionally, you should have experience in establishing effective escalation processes for production issues, fostering operational excellence, championing observability, and promoting efficient time management within the team. Your leadership will be essential in maintaining a stable, scalable, and innovative payment ecosystem at Phorest.

What You’ll Do

People Management & Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop an engineering team within the Pay Pillar.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, personal growth, and open communication to enhance team engagement and performance.
• Actively participate in recruiting, onboarding, and building a diverse and inclusive team.

Technical Leadership & Execution

• Provide strong technical guidance, ensuring best practices, scalability, and maintainability in all solutions.
• Work closely with the Principal Engineer to prioritize and address technical challenges effectively.
• Contribute hands‑on where needed—reviewing code, supporting system design, and guiding the team in building complex distributed systems.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers, Designers, and other Engineering teams to deliver cohesive, high‑quality solutions.
• Ensure technical solutions align with business goals and provide seamless payment experiences for our clients.

Operational Excellence & Observability

• Champion the observability strategy, ensuring service level objectives (SLOs) are defined and met.
• Implement robust monitoring tools to proactively detect and address system issues.
• Establish effective escalation processes and advocate for operational excellence within the team.

Project & Process Management

• Drive the execution of key technical projects, ensuring timely delivery while maintaining quality.
• Identify bottlenecks, improve processes, and ensure the team follows software delivery best practices.
• Regularly report to the Senior Engineering Manager on progress, strategy, and team challenges requiring support.

Who You Are

• 2+ years demonstrated impact in a similar leadership role, at scale and having direct reports.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a similar related field.
• Strong proficiency and 5 years of professional experience with object-oriented software design (for example Java, Kotlin, Ruby).
• Experience designing scalable resilient solutions ideally in fintech domain.
• The ability to collaboratively lead the evolution of your team’s strategy, setting unambiguous roadmaps and goals for the team and then delivering on them in a healthy, predictable and sustainable way.
• You should be comfortable coaching team members. You will communicate expectations clearly and deliver individual feedback frequently.
• You have a proven history of building close working relationships with your product counterparts and external stakeholders (like payment providers or 3rd party solutions), with the ability to inspire and motivate, improve quality and productivity, while maintaining technical innovation and excellence.
• Strategic thinker, with an ability to express and convey thoughts in meaningful ways in a fast paced and evolving environment, with a high degree of autonomy.
• Experience working with and managing Agile teams, as well as driving improvement across the whole development process.
• Experience developing and supporting engineers in their personal growth and career progression. You foster an environment where communication, teamwork, and collaboration are rewarded.
• You’ll focus on quality, while increasing efficiency, delivering value and reducing waste.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools.

Benefits

Your wellbeing is important to us - we provide private healthcare, 2 Wellness Days, an employee assistance program and a free online GP service.

As part of our Financial Wellbeing, we provide competitive Compensation, an Employee Share Purchase Scheme, Pension, Life Assurance, and Income Protection.

We help you travel by providing a bike to work scheme as well as tax saver transport tickets.

We support the women who work in Phorest by offering 2 weeks leave for Fertility Treatment, Pregnancy Loss and Menopause.

We care for your family and provide Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Benefits.

We grow our own timber! We provide a great learning environment and extensive development opportunities. We run development programs and provide access to many online resources including LinkedIn learning.

Moving house? Phorest employees get 3 moving days.

Want to learn more about Phorest? Check out nothingventured.rocks for our blog and Insights on building an evergreen company from the team here at Phorest.

Phorest is an equal opportunity employer.

For this position, flexi-time and working from home is possible. We are also open to remote work. Get in touch to ask for more information or to chat about your future with Phorest!

Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalised folks tend to only apply when they check every box. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to have a chat and see if you could be a great fit.